“Sir Peter, here is Richard Glyn wanting to marry Daphne. He has but
three thousand pounds; but she might go farther, and fare worse.”
Sir Peter literally glared at me. He gasped once or twice, then broke
out in a torrent.
“He wants to marry my ward, does he--my ward, with thirty thousand
pounds, in her own right! I wonder, damme, he didn’t propose to marry
Arabella, too. Young gentleman, you are too modest. Heiresses in
England go about hunting for poor lieutenants to marry. I suppose you
think it would be a fine stroke for me to marry my ward to my nephew!
Ha, ha! Ho, ho!”
His laughter was demoniac.
“Sir Peter,” said Lady Hawkshaw severely,--for I remained mute,--“I
am astonished at your violence and unreason. Did you never hear of an
heiress--and a fine, handsome girl, too, with many accomplishments,
and of a great family--marrying a poor lieutenant without a penny, and
without an ancestor?”
“By Jupiter, I never did!” roared Sir Peter.
“Then, Sir Peter,” cried Lady Hawkshaw, rising with awful dignity, “you
forget all about Lieutenant Peter Hawkshaw and the Honorable Apollonia
Jane Howard.”
At this, Sir Peter fairly wilted for a few moments; and I heard
something strangely like a tittering in the next room.
But Sir Peter presently recovered himself in a measure.
“But--but--there are lieutenants and lieutenants, Madam, I was
considered a man likely to rise. And besides, if I remember rightly, I
was not an ill-looking fellow, Madam.”
“Sir Peter, you were no taller then than you are now--five feet four
inches. Your hair was red, and you were far from handsome. Richard Glyn
is as good-looking as you ever were in your life; and he has already
made his mark. Richard Glyn,” turning to me, “you are at liberty to
marry Daphne Carmichael.”
“Richard Glyn,” bawled Sir Peter, “if you dare to _think_ you are
going to marry Daphne Carmichael,--mind, I say, if the thought ever
enters your damned head,--it will be as much as your life is worth! I
am going, this moment, to the First Lord of the Admiralty, to see if I
can’t have you sent to the West Indies, or the Gold Coast, with my best
wishes and endeavors to keep you there for ten years at least.”
“And what will you do with _me_, dear Uncle Peter?” suddenly asked a
soft voice; and Daphne, who had stolen into the room (she must have
been very near), stood before him, and nestled her pretty head against
his shoulder.
Sir Peter was too astonished, for a moment or two, to speak. The whole
thing had fallen upon him like the shock of an earthquake. But in a
little while he recovered his voice, and all of his voice, too; he
shouted as if he were on the bridge of the _Ajax_, with a whole gale
blowing, and the enemy in sight.
“Do!” he shrieked. “What shall I do? Bread and water, miss, for six
months! Discipline, miss!” And much more of the same sort.
This roused Lady Hawkshaw to take our part. She shouted back at Sir
Peter; and I, not to be outdone, shouted that Daphne was mine, and I
was hers, as long as life should last; and presently Sir Peter flung
out, in a royal rage, and Lady Hawkshaw flung after him; and Daphne
sank, in tears, on my shoulder, and I kissed her a hundred times, and
comforted her. But I knew Sir Peter was a determined man, in some
respects; and I felt assured he would shortly carry out his threat to
send me to sea, and, once at sea, it might be years before I should
again set foot in England. Scotland, then, sounded sweetly in our ears.
I found, in truth, that when it came actually to going off, Daphne’s
romantic willingness changed to a natural hesitation at so bold a step.
But the near prospect of going to the _Bellona_ turned the scale in
my favor, and I won from her a sort of oblique consent. And another
thing seemed to play directly into our hands. Sir Peter had business
at Scarborough, which might detain him some time; and, although it
was late in the autumn, he determined to take his family with him. I
believe it was by way of separating Daphne and me that he came to the
decision. Lady Hawkshaw was to go, and his two wards; and they were to
remain a month. This was so obviously showing us the road across the
border, that I told my sweet Daphne, plainly, I should carry her off;
at which she wept more, and protested less, than I had yet seen her.
In the whole affair, I had counted upon the assistance of Giles Vernon;
and on the very night the party left for Scarborough, after a tearful
farewell between Daphne and me, I went to Giles’ lodgings, to make a
clean breast of it.
Giles’ voice called me up stairs; and when I reached his room, there,
spread out on the bed, I saw a beautiful suit of brown and silver.
“Do you see that?” cried Giles. “That is my wedding suit. For it I
spent fifty of the last hundred pounds I had in the world, and it is to
marry Lady Arabella Stormont that I bought it.”
I thought he was crazy, but I soon perceived there was method in his
madness. He told me seriously enough that he meant to carry off Lady
Arabella Stormont from Scarborough.
“But--but--she does not like you,” I said, hesitating and amazed.
“We shall see about that, my lad,” he said, and then began to tell
me of what he thought a great change in his favor with Arabella. He
put many trifling things which I had not noted in such a light that
under his eloquent persuasion I began to believe Lady Arabella really
might have a secret weakness for him, which pride prevented her from
discovering. He had never failed to win any woman’s regard yet; and it
had always seemed a miracle to me, Richard Glyn, who had fallen under
his spell so many years ago, how anybody could resist him. He wound up
his argument by saying, in his usual confident manner,--
“Trust me, there is something compelling in the love I feel for
Arabella. Women are all alike, my boy. They want a master. Once put the
bit in their mouths, and they adore you for it. Let me have the spirit
to run away with that adorable creature, and see how quickly she will
come to my call. You will shortly see her clinging to me like peaches
to a southern wall.”
“And her fortune?”
“She is none the worse for that. But I swear to you, Dicky Glyn, that
I would carry her off as the Romans did the Sabine maidens, if she
had not a shilling,”--which I believed to be true; for his was an
infatuation which takes account of nothing.
He then began to tell me of his plans, and in them he showed his usual
shrewdness and boldness. The trip to Scarborough had put Scotland in
his head. He was likely to be sent to sea any day, to be gone, perhaps,
for years; just the arguments I had used to myself first and to Daphne
afterward.
I remembered that scene five years before, with Overton and Lady
Arabella in Sir Peter’s cubby-hole; and the memory of it made me think
with dread of Giles Vernon’s marrying Arabella. But I could not speak
openly; and, after all, she was so strange a creature that one could
scarcely judge her by the standard of other women. And then the plan
I had to confide to him very effectually withdrew the charges of any
battery I might have brought to bear on him.
When he had finished his tale, and I had told mine, Giles was in an
ecstasy. He laughed in his uproarious good humor.
“Oh, you sly dog!” he shouted. “So you are up to the same game!”
I explained that I had not much to fear. Daphne was undoubtedly fond
of me, and Lady Hawkshaw being on our side, and other reasons in our
favor,--all of which fitted Giles’ case exactly. And at last I gave
up, in sheer despair, and agreed to Giles’ suggestion that we should
together carry off the two damsels of our hearts; and then and there
we made our plans, sitting up until the gray dawn came.
Oh, the madness of it! the wildness of it! But we were two dare-devil
and happy-go-lucky lieutenants, without the prudence of landsmen.
We loved, and we were liable at any moment to be torn away for many
years from the idols of our hearts. Runaway marriages were common;
and only the parents and guardians were offended in those cases, and
forgiveness generally followed. We were about to commit a great folly;
but we thought we were nobly sustaining the reputation of his Majesty’s
sea-officers for our spirit and gallantry with the fair sex, and looked
not to the dreadful consequences of our desperate adventure.